Chapter 38
War of Liberation (3)
O God, O God.
Your servants are wavering.
They ask why You do not answer their prayers. Why You do not care for those of us left behind upon this barren land. Whether You have truly forsaken us completely.
Yesterday, one of the faithful priestesses who served You returned to Your embrace. Her name was Joanna, and she was like an older sister to me.
The young girls admired her, and the young men courted her. I loved Sister Joanna too.
Sister Joanna, who performed the most beautiful Dance of Flame in our temple, died yesterday with an iron stake driven through her chest, her body consumed by fire.
The people wept, asking how a dwarf—a descendant of steel and flame—could die impaled upon an iron stake and burned alive. They cried that the God of Small Things had disappeared.
Perhaps...
I wondered whether You truly had abandoned this small world and departed.
Our small world has been devastated beyond recognition, and we have been reduced to such a miserable existence.
I wondered whether You no longer listened to our prayers.
Of course, even if that were true, this lowly Eve would continue to pray forever.
Because this small world needs a god.
That is why this lowly Eve will never abandon her faith. Until this tiny body breaks apart, I will continue crying out to God. Until the day the God of Small Things returns, I will call for You until my voice is torn apart.
Even if all the firewood is gone and rain pours down upon us, this lowly Eve knows that all a great flame truly needs is a single spark.
And so, Eve...
will become a spark that never dies.
So that one day, it may blaze.
So that one day, it may illuminate this world again.
***
“It escaped toward the jungle.”
“Why?”
“It appears to have realized that the miracle will soon end. It may be planning to use the mysterious plants bestowed upon us by God as cover.”
“That certainly seems...”
The duration of the immortality Eve had invoked through the holy relic had already expired. A full minute had passed, and Eve’s other powers were now fading one after another.
There was [Iron Judgment], which ensured that every shot struck the dragon regardless of where it was aimed, and [Forced Silence], which had completely sealed the dragon’s abilities.
All the advantages that had given the dwarves the upper hand were about to disappear entirely.
They had succeeded in breaking the dragon’s wings, but much would change if the conditions of the battlefield changed. In war, the defending side naturally held a far greater advantage.
If the dragon drew them into such difficult terrain, the dwarves’ chances of victory would plummet. With the exception of unusual cases like Santiago, most dwarves were absolutely terrible at fighting.
Fundamentally, dwarves were a race specialized in production.
“Don’t worry, everyone! Jude is here!”
Fortunately, a race far more specialized in “war” than the dwarves was present.
They were beings that could be killed only through divine power—the immortal undead legion commanded by the necromancer Jude.
Without priests or paladins, Jude was practically invincible.
“Jude won’t let his friends die.”
“Because Jude doesn’t want to be alone again!”
Jude’s undead were given all the heavy weapons and new armaments that the dwarves themselves could not carry. Several dwarf soldiers and paladins capable of wielding faint traces of divine power were assigned to track Dragon Partmos.
“What if the dragon escapes completely?”
“No, it won’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Johan is merely a governor, not the new king or emperor of this world. He will make a decisive gamble to produce results.”
“Moreover, the wings of his dragon—a precious resource—have been broken. If he returns like this, Johan’s dragon will no longer be a dragon, but merely a winged lizard. Johan will never willingly return in such a state. Never.”
Vulcanos, Hephaestus’s grandfather, had already guessed what kind of situation Governor Johan was in.
If Johan had personally entered the battle, then he, too, must have been driven into a precarious position.
“He intends to remain hidden and wait for our powers to expire. Now that it can no longer fly, properly retreating with that massive body would be difficult.”
“Then...”
“It will reappear the moment our powers end.”
After hearing that, Eve spoke.
“Then why don’t we seize the initiative?”
“The initiative...?”
“We’ll set another trap.”
Eve’s eyes gleamed.
“I’ll be the bait.”
***
After burrowing underground, Johan reached an area near the jungle, far from the enemy encampment.
The dense jungle growing in the middle of a desert was certainly bizarre. However, Johan had already witnessed countless times just how drastically a “god” could transform a world, so it was hardly surprising.
‘Even after coming this far, those powers still haven’t expired.’
What truly surprised Johan was the priestess’s abilities.
Even the dwarf priests who had existed during their age of glory had never possessed powers this potent or extensive.
‘I have heard that priests who preserve their faith until the very end in a dying world occasionally manifest extraordinary abilities...’
Surely a “Hero” has not emerged.
Johan muttered to himself.
‘No. She cannot be a Hero.’
If she were...
she would not need to rely on these petty tricks.
In any case, now positioned within the jungle, Johan peered through the dense trees. Instead of tiny dwarves, he saw white skeletons accompanied by the rumbling of engines.
‘The necromancer.’
Knowing their powers could disappear at any moment, they had apparently decided to send in the skeletons first.
In Johan’s judgment, it was not a bad decision.
His side possessed no divine forces, so Johan had no way to permanently reduce the number of skeleton soldiers. It was a strategy intended to force losses upon him.
Once again, it was hardly the kind of tactic dwarves would devise.
Of course—
‘Amateurs.’
That did not make it the best strategy.
[Master.]
“Yes.”
[My power has returned.]
They should have unleashed every last bit of their strength before their “powers” expired. They were not in a position to concern themselves with efficiency by attempting to force losses upon their enemy or reduce their own casualties.
Because—
“Show them what you are.”
Once their petty tricks ended...
the battle was already as good as over.
“Show them what a dragon truly is.”
Partmos did not answer with words.
It answered through action.
[—!]
Partmos’s scales stood on end, and the heavens and earth began to tremble. The next moment, a bolt of lightning struck from a clear sky.
KRAKOOOM—!
The lightning reduced the skeleton legion to ashes.
As their momentum faltered, thunder roared and torrential rain began to pour. And it was not merely rain.
Violent winds howled as the earth shook, and a dense fog spread around Dragon Partmos.
A fog so thick that they could not see even an inch ahead...
It was a dragon’s innate power.
Its ability to control the weather, which had remained sealed until now, began transforming the environment itself.
The battlefield had fallen into the dragon’s hands.
“Uh...”
At the center of the skeleton legion, the tiny skeleton known as the necromancer Jude turned his head from side to side in bewilderment.
A strange scene appeared before Jude’s eyes.
From the instant the fog descended, Dragon Partmos could no longer be properly identified. Its enormous forty-meter-long silhouette repeatedly appeared and vanished in different places like a mirage.
This was precisely why military specialist Raymond had emphasized the need for identification equipment and tracking-based weapon systems.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The skeleton legion under Jude’s command began firing at phantoms. Lacking true minds of their own and merely obeying their master’s commands, the undead could not distinguish the dragon’s false images in the fog from its real body.
As their ammunition was wasted, the falling raindrops abruptly stopped in midair as though time itself had frozen.
The suspended water began to writhe. It gathered together, merging into a vast torrent.
Crash!
Like a mighty breaking wave, the torrent slammed into the bewildered skeleton legion. It knocked them down and swept the white skeletons far into the distance.
The flailing skeletons could not resist the current.
Just as one could not deal with the undead without divine power, one could not confront a mystical being without possessing the means to wield such mysteries.
And dragons stood at the pinnacle of all mystical beings.
Creatures born at the very summit.
Creatures beloved by the world itself.
RUMBLE—!
After the entire skeleton legion was swept away, Jude lay drenched and sprawled across the desert at the jungle’s edge.
Dragon Partmos approached the skeleton with heavy, thudding footsteps.
Then it crushed Jude beneath its foot.
CRUNCH!
With a grisly sound, Jude’s body shattered beyond recognition, fragments of bone exploding in every direction. His broken skull fell onto the sand, and with nothing but his head remaining, Jude continued clacking his teeth.
At that moment—
“You will receive divine punishment!”
A young girl came running from the far end of the desert.
“You drove the dwarves out of their own world! You impaled the dwarves who were once loved by fire and steel upon iron stakes and burned them alive! You placed shackles upon our feet and reduced us to mere parts in your machinery!”
“......”
“You know your sins better than anyone!”
Star-shaped eyes.
A brilliant halo behind her head.
It was not difficult to discern the girl’s identity.
“The dwarven Saintess.”
The Saintess whom Johan had considered the most troublesome enemy had appeared before him of her own accord.
Johan stared at her and wondered,
‘...Why did she suddenly appear?’
Logically, the Saintess should have remained at the very rear, recovering her strength and supporting her allies until the final moment.
Her mere presence would have been an enormous help.
Why had such a valuable person come all the way here herself?
[She is struggling desperately because she fears being abandoned again.]
Partmos chuckled.
[She must have rushed here out of fear that she would be abandoned once more, just as the ancient dwarf god abandoned them. Her powers have ended, and that necromancer was being defeated helplessly. She must have feared that this world’s new god would also turn its back on them.]
“......”
[Did they not say their new god was once human? This is not even a world he created himself. Under these circumstances, he would naturally want to abandon it. Keeping it would only bring him greater losses.]
Partmos, who knew the dwarves’ history, spoke with certainty.
Even Johan found the reasoning convincing.
And yet...
‘Something about this bothers me...’
Johan’s instincts warned him.
Be careful.
However—
[I will reduce her to the most wretched state imaginable.]
It was also true that they could not let this opportunity slip away.
[I will throw her into the flames and drive an iron stake through that worthless heart. Then I will drain every last drop of blood from the body that dared humiliate me, have her stuffed, and display her as an ornament where every dwarf can see.]
Whatever her intentions might be...
appearing before a dragon now was an “incredibly foolish act.”
Truly, unbelievably foolish.
Partmos’s lips moved.
The next instant, thunder crashed and a bolt of lightning struck Eve directly on the head. Her body convulsed as she shouted, then collapsed limply to the ground.
But it did not end there.
The torrential rain froze, transforming into countless spikes of ice that pierced Eve’s fallen body.
Countless holes opened across her body, and thick blood began flowing from her wounds, soaking into the desert sand.
Dyeing it red.
Watching the scene, Partmos burst into hearty laughter.
Very, very hearty laughter.
But then...
‘...Her wounds are closing?’
Eve was not dead.
‘A priest’s characteristic tenacity? No—even if she is a Saintess with a halo, can she truly possess such extraordinary vitality?’
Johan did not know.
A priest’s vitality was proportional to their faith.
And the faith of the most devout believer—one who had refused to abandon her faith even at the very end—was stronger than any faith Johan had ever known.
Strong enough to grant her the vitality to survive a broken neck from a failed somersault, a direct lightning strike, or even dozens of holes being punched through her body.
Her tiny fingers twitched.
Grains of sand trickled from them.
Johan saw it clearly.
[I will crown our victory with that wench’s corpse!]
Partmos, however, seemed not to have realized what was happening. Perhaps it believed it had avenged the humiliation of fleeing with its back exposed, because Dragon Partmos merely continued laughing in delight.
“Wait, Partmos! Don’t let your guard—”
And then—
「Intermediate believer Eve activates [Pillar of Light].」
Partmos’s body had been concealed within the fog.
A beam of light descended upon its head.
It inflicted no damage.
It was simply a pillar of pure light—
one intended to reveal the dragon’s location to her allies.
“Now—!”
“Fire—!”
Bang, bang, bang, bang—!
At the signal, dwarves erupted from beneath the ground and pulled their triggers.
The bullets were insignificant.
But they were unexpected.
And nothing was more lethal than an unexpected ambush.
[—!]
Blood sprayed from Partmos’s face as it laughed thunderously. A bullet struck one of its wide-open eyes, inflicting the dragon’s first true wound.
Its laughter turned into a scream.
Partmos roared, shook its head, and inhaled. A dragon’s inhalation and exhalation were never merely acts of breathing. They became a “breath”—a violent force capable of destroying everything.
[You... damned...!]
However—
“Si—lence—!”
The breath gathering around Partmos’s mouth vanished in an instant.
Just as it had when Johan first appeared before the fortress and attempted to unleash the dragon’s breath.
‘Her powers... weren’t completely exhausted...’
Johan’s eyes widened.
This had never been an opportunity.
It was another trap.
She had used herself as bait to make them lower their guard, waiting to spring another trap at the most decisive moment.
「Intermediate believer Eve activates the skill [Forced Silence]. All soul-based skills within range are forcibly canceled.」
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion caused Partmos’s body to stagger and tilt to one side.
One of its scales broke away, revealing layers of softer scales beneath it. Among them was a single scale growing in the opposite direction.
The dwarves knew what it was.
“The reverse scale! It’s exposed—!”
The dragon’s vital point.
The weakness through which they could end its life.
“Partmos, cover it! No matter what happens—”
Johan’s voice grew urgent.
Then—
[Yawwwn.]
Partmos’s body refused to move.
[Winged kin... bullied our skeleton friend... by stepping on him.]
[That... was very bad.]
RUMBLE—
The jungle’s bizarre plants moved like living animals, coiling around Partmos’s massive body and constricting it.
Lazy, languid voices emerged from the plants.
The dinosaurs of another world.
The inhabitants of the Third World—the Giant but Indolent World.
The druids whose tremendous powers had made their entire world flourish were now exerting their influence across worlds.
“Hide! Conceal your body!”
Johan shouted.
Eve’s power had sealed all of Partmos’s abilities again. Fortunately, the fog and torrential rain the dragon had already summoned remained.
Partmos attempted to flee while tearing away the tenacious vines winding around its body.
However—
“We will definitely need thermal-detection radar.”
“Radar? I don’t know what kind of device that is, but if it tracks heat, I think the Saintess can do it.”
They already had a living radar.
Dragon Partmos’s body, previously hidden by the fog and rain, began glowing red. It flashed repeatedly, revealing its exact location.
It was impossible to miss a brilliantly illuminated target forty meters long.
BOOM—!
Explosions and gunfire rang out together.
The dragon roared amid the rain as countless paladins pursued it. Advancing in pillars of fire, they were struck by the blind sweeps of Dragon Partmos’s tail as it made its final desperate struggle.
They died.
Meaningless, insignificant deaths.
Yet no one hesitated.
One by one, they crumbled away.
There was no fear.
There was no regret.
If they could leave behind even the smallest mark...
If they could offer even the slightest assistance to the smaller dwarves who would inherit their world and their lives...
If they could clear even a little more of the path ahead...
then there was nothing they would not do.
But they still lacked one final strike.
The decisive blow!
“Joy to the world—!”
And the final blow came from—
“The Lord has coooome—!”
The girl who had begun this battle.
The girl who had brought a new god to a world that had lost its own.
The most devout believer, who had held on to her faith until the very end in an age when everyone else had abandoned hope.
“‘The darkest hour of the day comes just before sunrise.’”
「Intermediate believer Eve activates the special skill [Hymn for the Small].」
The next moment, the heavens opened.
Beyond the sky that parted through the clouds and rain, every lowly being present was allowed to behold the same celestial sight that Eve saw.
The sky they had believed bleak and barren was no longer dark and lifeless.
Beyond the opened heavens stood their ancient god, whom they had believed they would never see again.
The ancient dwarf god with his magnificent beard.
The first father who had abandoned them.
The old god’s image appeared faintly before fading away.
The place he had occupied was replaced by another god—one who had once been human, yet was far more merciful and warm than the god of old.
A god who would never abandon this world or its small inhabitants, no matter what happened.
The new God of Small Things.
Then iron stakes fell from the opened heavens.
The long stakes pierced the reverse scale exposed upon the dragon’s body and drove deeply into the earth.
As the dragon writhed, snow-white flames erupted and began consuming the forty-meter-long predator.
The sight was almost sacred.
[This... cannot be... This is...!]
The dragon thrashed with its tongue hanging from its mouth. Soon, its entire body shuddered before collapsing with a tremendous crash.
Its venomous voice was heard no more.
The dwarves silently watching the scene felt it.
「The party has achieved victory.」
「MVP: Eve」
They had won.
「Johan, governor of Earth No. 444, [The Small but Deadly World], has perished. His dragon, Partmos, which had become a symbol of destruction, has also fallen in this war.
The invaders from another world are beginning to feel the rising tide of revolution—a mighty revolutionary wave that will overturn everything.
You have ended an ancient relationship between natural enemies, broken the shackles of the oppressed dwarves, and granted them freedom.
The dwarves will now greet the dawn of a new day. [The Small but Deadly World] will reclaim its former glory and march toward absolute freedom.
An evil god who has brought hundreds of worlds to their knees, led legions of destruction, never shied away from conflict, and loves conquest and struggle has begun to take notice of you.
This is deeply frightening.
Truly, deeply frightening.」
A tremendous cheer erupted.
Overcome with emotion, the dwarves fell to their knees and wept. Sitting amid the devastation of the battlefield and sobbing uncontrollably, they looked almost like children.
What they had gained at that moment could never be expressed in words.
Of course...
「You have ended the “natural-enemy relationship.”」
「You have defeated the otherworldly governor!」
「Another puzzle piece for the fallen world has been placed.」
「Pieces collected: 3/4」
「You have achieved an overwhelming number of accomplishments.」
「You have achieved a feat that will forever be remembered throughout the World of Stars.」
「This is an unprecedented achievement.」
「A Mythic-grade reward will be granted.」
「The brightest stars of the [World of Stars] have begun to take notice of your existence. They now understand that the “god who was once human” possesses an extraordinary soul.」
「The demons of the darkest abyss have begun to take notice of your existence. They know that the brightest star produces the grandest explosion.
And demons love nothing more than the moment a star disappears.」
What Lee Shin had gained...
could be expressed in words.
「TIP: {(0`)F!!」